Who Wants To Be a Beta Male? I Do!

In the world of game, the pathetic and despised beta male is always the punching bag. He’s ordinary, average, has no game, has an OK girlfriend but can’t pick up in bars. This man, we are solemnly assured, is a miserable loser we do not want to be like.

But I say- what’s so bad about being average, anyway? It’s not as good as being above average, but better than being below average. That’s what average means.

The beta male is a regular guy. He has regular friends. He is not dominant over them, or over much of anybody. But nobody dominates him in a particularly strong manner. He has a girlfriend, and has had several in his life. He played and plays sports, maybe not well, but respectably. He has an OK job he doesn’t hate.

Life for the beta male is mostly OK. He doesn’t get the quantity or quality of sex an alpha male gets, and he might not make as much money. But he has all of his needs and some of his wants met.

My goal in life has always been to be a beta male. The most important distinction between a beta and a lower status male is social acceptance. A beta is an accepted member of the group. As such he has friends and access to social activities and the social status to meet and be acceptable to girls. For a boy, group acceptance centers around playing sports.

I was an Elephant Man style social outcast in junior high. I was determined that in high school, things woudl be better. I decided to get into some sports that nobody else had been in either so I would have some chance. I got into water polo and swimming, and I did OK. But I was still not accepted. I didn’t have the history and learned skills of young male social interaction, so I wasn’t one of them.

I ended up leaving high school early. I wanted to do something interesting and cool, so I joined the military later. I figured this would be a new environment where I would start on the same footing as everyone else, and I could be an accepted member of the group.

But that didn’t work out either. I still didn’t have the life history of being an accepted member of a male group. I was not one of them, and could not become one of them.

I think trying to become a beta is a strategy a lot of omegas pursue, and I think it’s futile. Even for guys who are already betas, maintaining that status is a lot of work. I think a lot of guys spend a lot of time watching sports because their beta cred depends on being able to talk about sports with the other betas. Another big part of being a beta is reinforcing the group boundaries- that is, keeping omegas out. Betas are not welcoming and inclusive people, hell they’re generally much worse than alphas, because you don’t represent any kind of a threat to an alpha. Lower-ranking betas are the most concerned with drawing the line between people who are not cool, but OK, and people who are not OK.

Well, that’s pretty grim. If you can’t become a beta, do you have to be an omega all your life? I will refer back to something I’ve said before, the “lone wolf” strategy. Do not base your status on group membership. Be polite and mildly friendly to everyone, but do not try to be a member of the group. Make your job skill something that is practiced solo, and have hobbies that can be enjoyed by yourself.

Total isolation is not good. Be involved in some group stuff for your human need to be around people. You can do things with people from Meetup if you have no other friends. But don’t try to improve your status that way.

Hello Candice again – Glad you are writing again! I started to think of how onerous it must be to watch those sports in order to “fit in”. Seriously, I have difficulty with the notion of slavishly doing something boring just to retain group membership, ditto rejecting perfectly nice but different people! Most times it seems the best way is always to make the best of yourself rather than going against your own nature. 🙂 C

I think you should not go for becoming beta. Being alpha also is also lonely business. So you might as well just work on getting as many alpha features as possible.

Being beta is actually HARDER than being alpha. You pretty much said so yourself in the post, and this is correct. You would have to deal with girlfriend drama, the girlfriends not wanting to have sex all the time and you’d have to spend tons of time managing your beta status.

You are already a loner, so the easiest way is to go for alpha and nothing else.